The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventors, to the extent it is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Today, various computing devices support software applications that provide interactive, digital maps (“mapping applications”). Mapping applications may include various types of geographic data, such as topographical data and street data, for example. The geographic data may be schematic-based, and/or photography-based as in the case of satellite imagery. Users may interact with a displayed map using viewing functions such as pan or zoom, or by entering location information such as a street address. Moreover, various portable computing devices, such as mobile phones and hand-held global positioning system (GPS) units, currently support software applications that provide navigation functions (“navigating applications”). Navigation applications typically provide a current location of the device user (via a locating technique such as GPS, cellular tower triangulation, or WiFi access point triangulation, for example), which is shown to the user on a digital map of the relevant geographic area. In this manner, navigation applications provide information relevant to a user's immediate surroundings. For example, a user running a navigation application on a portable device while in or near an airport may be automatically provided with a map display that includes a “footprint” of the airport (e.g., a schematic representation and/or satellite photograph that shows the airport terminal building(s), runway(s), etc.), and possibly the name of the airport. However, other information likely to be of particular interest to airport visitors, such as flight information for flights arriving at or departing from the airport, is not provided. Instead, a user seeking information for a particular flight, such as a flight number, a departure/arrival time, flight status, etc., typically must obtain the information by telephone, visiting a web site (e.g., an airline web site) and entering search information identifying the flight, visiting a physical help desk within the airport, and/or locating a Flight Information Display System (FIDS) display within the airport.